


Bring Me To Life

by porcupinegoldstein



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Asylum, Experimentation, F/M, Mental Illness, Needles, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2016-01-28
Packaged: 2018-04-24 18:16:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4930075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/porcupinegoldstein/pseuds/porcupinegoldstein
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma Simmons has been a patient in the hospital 'HYDRA' for ten years, and her whole life changes when she meets Leo Fitz, another patient. She manages to convince Fitz to help her find out what's really happening in the hospital and what they can do to stop it. </p><p>Trigger Warnings apply for violence, needles, mental illness and abuse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Field of Innocence

Jemma lay back on her single duvet, pushed to the side of the cell that she had to call a room. The only difference from any other sort of hospital was that it was more like a prison than anything else. Instead of four walls on the rooms for the patients, they had one wall and the rest were just bars. Some patients were calm and placid, nothing bad happened to them. Then there were the patients who fought back and only ended up being hurt back. Jemma was one of these patients. She hated the way that people were being treated in the hospital, and with every day that went past more and more people disappeared. It got her curious. She had tried to sneak into the restricted area where she had seen some of the nurses take the patients, but she just got thrown back by the guards by the door. She always found it strange for a hospital for mentally ill people to have guards. When one of them had thrown her back, she just tried again and tried to push the guards out of the way but, she just got hurt even more and thrown into her room. 

She curled up onto her bed, pulling her knees up to her chest and watched the guards and nurses patrol up and down past her room. Not one of them looked in to see if she was okay. As each figure passed, Jemma’s mind filled with images of how they might die. It wasn’t something that an averagely functioning human being would think about, and up until Jemma was eighteen she showed no signs of needing to be assigned to a hospital but, after her eighteenth birthday she had started having violent images in her mind and after telling people about them, her parents found the hospital known as ‘HYDRA.’ The young girl was snapped out of her visions when she saw two guards and a third figure between them. A boy. He looked about her age and she wondered what he had done to get in here. Lifting her head and sitting up on her bed, she watched them closely. The guards stopped at the room next to her, tossing the boy in before locking the door and heading back down the corridor to go and torture another patient that needed better help and better treatment than what HYDRA were providing. 

The girl let her curiosity get the better of her and walked over to the bars that she shared with his room. She let her eyes study his shaking figure for a few seconds. His curly hair and his blue eyes that looked so lost and confused. Her eyes trailed down to his hands, noticing that they were shaking before turning her attention back to his face.  
“Hey, what’s your name?” she asked him softly.  
“I- What?” he looked straight at Jemma, confused and clearly frightened of what was happening.  
“Your name.”  
“It’s- it’s Leo. Leo Fitz. Most people just call me Fitz. So, yeah. What are yo- I mean who are you?”  
“Jemma Simmons. I’ve been here for a while now,” she spoke to him, letting her face rest between two of the bars.  
“Why are you in here? All the other patients are out somewhere, doing activities or something,” he pointed out to her, staying where he was. He didn’t want to risk getting closer to her, afraid of what she was capable of. Especially with her being the only patient in her room.  
“I tried to get into the restricted area and fought back when the guards pushed me away,” she answered simply with a small shrug. “They won’t let any patients in there, and I know that it’s not a place where they just store the medicine. Sometimes they’ll take a patient in there. They’ll roll them in there, unconscious on one of those wheeled beds, and then those patients are never seen again.”  
“Maybe it’s just intensive care,” Fitz suggested, a little wary of the girl in the room next to him.  
“I doubt it. That’s not how they work here. They don’t care about us Fitz. If you do something wrong, you get punished. I can even count how many bruises that I’ve gotten since I’ve been in here.”  
“How long have you been here?”  
“Ten years. I was first sent here when I was eighteen, and for the first few years I obeyed the rules. I went into the entertainment room with the other patients, took my medicine and went for meal time. Then I realised that there were strange things going on. People going missing and sometimes at night, I can hear screaming,” she told him with a shudder.  
“No. That can’t be right,” Fitz shook his head. “Is that why you’re in the hospital? Because you keep thinking of things like that, and that you hear screaming?”  
“Why are you here?” she demanded, eyes narrowed and glaring straight at him.  
“I- I tried to um- I kept playing with fire and matches. I ended up burning down this old abandoned house, and I didn’t try to stop it. I like to watch the flames you know,” he told her. “The flames just dance and they just destroy things. I used to set fire to a lot of things before the police found me and thought that I should be in here,” he shook his head and looked over at Jemma, who seemed to be fixed on his words, her eyes wide and her lips slightly parted. It was almost like he could see a flame in her eyes.  
“When I turned eighteen, when I first got admitted here I started to see violent images in my head. I would look at someone and just have an image of them dying in my head. Of course when I told my parents they sent me here straight away. I can still see the images now, even with my medicine. It’s not as bad, I’ve not seen any images of the patients dying but, the nurses and the guards. I can see them all dying,” she told him. “They deserve it.”  
“What makes you think that?”  
“They’re bad people. This isn’t a place where we’re being helped. They give us a cup of pills and then they hurt us if we disobey. They don’t allow visits, or outings. We’re stuck here. You’ll see soon enough.”  
“Have you ever thought of escaping?”  
“How can I? The doors and windows are all locked and you need a key card to get any of them open. Outside they have barbed wires over the walls, and the walls are too tall for anyone to climb over,” she explained. “We’re all stuck here, and they’re never going to let us out because none of us are getting any better.”

Fitz opened his mouth to speak again before the guards came once again and stopped outside of Jemma’s cell.  
“She’s the one. The one that tried to get into the restricted section,” one of the guards spoke gruffly, unlocking the cell door and striding into the room. Grabbing Jemma’s wrist roughly he yanked her up to her feet and observed her struggling for a few seconds.  
“She’s feisty. Maybe an hour upstairs will change that,” the other guard pointed out. Fitz watched it all happening, staying quiet. He didn’t want to provoke the guards, not after seeing how they were treating Jemma. Soon, he was alone again watching as the guards dragged the still struggling girl away.


	2. My Immortal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The doctor's start their treatment on Jemma 'upstairs.' The treatment however is not something that she wants to go through, and she can't fight back or they'll do something worse to her. Meanwhile Fitz worries for her and decides that he wants to help her. 
> 
> Trigger Warnings for Violence, Needles, Blood and Abuse.

Upstairs was what they called it. Only the people that had been upstairs knew what went on up there. The drugs that they injected into the patients veins, the electric shocks that they gave the patients. There were rumours that some of the patients had died from it all. Rumours that Jemma fully believed, which is why she didn’t want to go through anything of what the so called doctor’s called treatment. She was thrust into a splintered wooden chair, in a completely white room. Her hands and feet were bound as soon as they sat her down. She was still trying to struggle, trying to break free so that she could just get out. As she looked frantically around the room at all of the different doctors, the medical instruments that she could spy came to life in her mind. Scissors cutting someone up, a needle through someone’s eye and the metal rods that she could see at the side colliding with the back of the doctor’s head. It was all so graphic and the white walls, the white floors and the white ceiling tiles were all dripping with scarlet blood.

  
However these images were soon replaced when Jemma had a needle thrust into her arm with no warning. She gritted her teeth, not wanting to let out a scream. She didn’t want to give in. Didn’t want to show any of the doctors that she was weak. She was Jemma Simmons. She was strong. She had to fight against these insane methods. There was nothing wrong with her! Yes, she had mental images of violence and people dying but, that could be treated with a simple medication. She was sure of it. The drugs surged through her blood system, it felt like her blood was on fire. This wasn’t human. This wasn’t something that anyone should have to go through. Her hands balled into fists and she squeezed her eyes tightly shut. The top of her head starting to turn red at the sheer pain of whatever the drug was being pumped through her body, and the hole where the needle had been wasn’t even being treated. The doctor’s weren’t cleaning the blood dripping down her arm. Weren’t putting any bandage or plaster over it. Nothing that Jemma truly needed. She wasn’t sure when the burning sensation stopped but, when she opened her eyes again she felt weak. Her body was limp and her head dropped as she looked around the room again. This time it was slightly blurred and had a red tint, no surprise with her eyes being more bloodshot than any ordinary human being’s should be after being injected with a needle.

  
The next treatment seemed to involve a metal helmet contraption. One of the white blurs, came towards Jemma with a blob of metal advancing on her, coming closer to her head. She opened her mouth to protest but, she couldn’t get any words out. Her voice completely missing after the treatment she had just been through. The helmet was lodged onto her head, a wire pressing into her forehead. Even if she was weak she could still feel the wire. The attached the helmet to some sort of machine on a tray next to her, she let her eyes flick over to the machine and couldn’t make out anything. It was just a mess of circles and lights to her, when in actual fact it was full of dials and lights. The only thing she could remember after that was an electric pulse shooting straight to her forehead, and then nothing. After that everything turned black and she fell unconscious.  
The doctor’s unstrapped her from the chair, and took the helmet off of her checking for a pulse. It was weak but, still there. She would live. One of them lifted her, placing her on a hard, cool, medical bed, strapping her down in case she woke up. They wheeled her back down to her cell, unstrapping her from the bed and just sliding her off, down onto the floor. One of the doctor’s turned to Fitz, who was sat in the corner of his cell, shaking and scared of the state that Jemma had come back in.  
“Don’t try anything, or you’ll end up like her,” he told the scared Scottish boy, who simply nodded in return. The doctor’s locked Jemma’s cell door and turned to walk back down the halls, leaving the two patients alone together. Fitz stood from where he was, coming to the edge of the cell that was facing Jemma’s. He knelt down and observed her for a few seconds, wondering what could have possibly happened to her ‘upstairs.’ He bit down on his lip and looked down, not wanting to keep staring at her limp body for much longer.

  
After an hour, Jemma started coming round. It started with her simply twitching and the slight move of a finger, before she opened her eyes slowly. The whole world was a blur and she had to blink a couple of times until she saw that she was back in her cell. With a head that felt like she was waking up with a hangover, and a worn out body she pulled herself up. She checked herself over, and observed that her hair was slightly messy and tatty, and that her clothes were slightly torn. She hadn’t remembered doing anything to tear them. Could the doctors have done something to her that tore her clothes up? She hoped not. She could only imagine what sort of awful things that they might have done to her. What they might have done to other patients. When Fitz saw that she was awake, he lifted his head and watched her for a couple of seconds before her eyes met his.  
“You’re still here? I would have thought that they would have made you move cells. Nobody ever stays next to me for long,” she told him.  
“No. I’m still here. Sorry, is that a bad thing?” Fitz answered, looking away from her lifeless eyes.  
“No. I like having someone that I can talk to,” she assured him.  
“What did they do to you Jemma?”  
“I can’t remember all of it. There were needles, straps, my whole body felt like it was on fire,” she told him. “And before they even did any of that, I had images in my head. Like the images that I told you about earlier. The images that put me in here in the first place.”  
“What did you see?”  
“Death,” she simply answered as if it was a question to a maths equation.

  
That ended the conversation between the pair. Jemma looking away from him, but him with his eyes still on her. There was something about her that he found intriguing. Not just because she had images of people dying. No. There was something deeper there. Something that made him want to help her. Even if he needed some help himself, he wanted to try and help her. Seeing violent images and liking to set fire to things were two completely different things. He wouldn’t be able to set fire to anything in the hospital. No matches. Her reasoning for being in there however, couldn’t be stopped. Even if helping her meant, coming up with a plan to escape the hospital. Yes, he knew that he was thinking like Shawshank Redemption and One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest but, he needed to get out of there. Needed to get her out of there if she had come back from the mysterious upstairs unconscious with little memory of what had happened to her. That was it. Leo Fitz was going to help Jemma Simmons.


	3. Whisper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for violence and blood

 

It must have been around midnight and Fitz lay awake and still on his mattress. He let his gaze move over to Jemma’s cell and wondered if she was still awake and if she was, what she was thinking about. Jemma had made him curious and he wanted to know more about her. He wanted to grow closer with her. He just didn’t know what he could say to a girl like her. 

“Jemma?” he started. “Are you awake?”

“Yeah,” she answered. “I’m awake. I can never get much sleep in this place, and that treatment has only made it worse,” she told him and walked over to bars connecting their cells, sitting down by them. “Come sit with me?”

He didn’t need to be told twice and Fitz came over, sitting next to her with a small sigh, and let his eyes close. 

“What did they do to you in there?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know and it scares me Fitz,” her voice wavered a little and he could have sworn he heard it crack. 

“I hope that you don’t have to go through it again.”

“That makes two of us,” she bit her lip and let her eyes move over to him. Being in that hospital for so long had managed to allow her eyes to adjust when it was dark, and she reached her hand through the bars, taking his own in hers. “I hope that nothing bad happens to you either.” 

They stayed like that for a while until the pair of them fell asleep, heads resting against the bars and their hands intertwined. They were only roused from their sleep when they heard a loud klaxon going off, Jemma immediately sitting bolt upright and stood waiting for the guards to come down the halls. Fitz however stayed where he was sitting, looking up at Jemma and blinking blearily when the bright lights all flashed on. The guards walked down the hall ticking off the patient’s names as they passed the cells before stopping outside of Fitz’ cell.

“You. Stand up,” one of the guards glared at the boy.

“Why don’t you make me?” Fitz answered back, staying where he was.

“I’m giving you one more chance.”

“Well, it’s not like you’re going to do anything too bad to me is it?”

“Fitz…” Jemma warned.

“You be quiet,” the guard pointed at Jemma before turning back to Fitz. “And you, I think you need to learn some manners. Now get up and be quiet or I’ll make sure that you don’t talk again.”

There was silence between the two men for a while as Fitz glared, and slowly stood up crossing his arms over his chest. 

“Still not going to stop talking,” he answered. 

With that comment that guard opened his cell door and tried to make a grab for the Scotsman who dodged out of the way quickly. The guard quickly managed to get a hold of the younger man who was struggling and fighting, hitting the guard and such while Jemma stood and watched intrigued and slightly mesmerized by how Fitz was standing up for himself. Eventually another guard came in and got Fitz pinned down before carrying him away and out of the room. Jemma watched them drag him away and once the door closed she looked down to the floor and her eyes narrowed at what she saw, her eyebrows furrowing together. Kneeling down she got a better look at it and saw that it was one of the guard’s key cards. When she was sure that nobody was looking, she grabbed the card and lodged it down her shirt to fit safely in the sports bra that the female patients had been made to wear, all the while trying to think of Fitz and what they were doing to him. 

The guards did almost the same as what they did to Jemma as they did to Fitz. He was still drugged, electrocuted and hurt but, there was one more thing that they did to him. He could barely see when one of the doctors came right up close to him with what looked like scissors but, he wasn’t entirely sure. What happened next was a blur, he felt the scissors in his mouth, tasted blood and saw blood but, he passed out before he knew what was happening his head drooping down to the floor and blood pouring from his mouth, staining both his clothes and the floor. 

When Jemma heard footsteps coming back into the hall she whipped her head around and had to hold back a gasp when she saw the state that Fitz was in. Blood on his shirt, on his chin, his hair messed up and his skin black and blue. Whatever they did to him Jemma wanted to know. Before the guards walked away, Jemma ran to the front of her cell, and grabbed onto the bars.

“What did you do to him you monsters?” she yelled at them, causing the guards to stop and come right over to her cell, looming over her.

“We just made sure that he wasn’t going to speak back to us again, and you better watch your own tongue girl. Unless you want to end up like your boyfriend,” the guard grinned a crooked grin and walked off, leaving Jemma and Fitz alone once again.

Letting out a small sigh, Jemma sat down where her’s and Fitz’ cell’s connected and looked over at him with a forlorn look in her eyes. 

“Oh Fitz. You’re so brave. I hope they don’t take that away from you,” she whispered softly and just watched him. 

It felt like hours when he finally woke up and saw Jemma sitting by the bars of their cells. He would have smiled but, his mouth was killing him. Instead he came over towards her and sat by her. When she heard movement in his cell, her face broke into a smile and she turned so that she could be fully facing him, threading her arms through the bars and hugging him as best she could. 

“Oh Fitz, I was so worried. What did they do to you?” she asked, eyes full of concern. “You’ve got blood everywhere. It must have been something awful.”

He tried to open his mouth to speak but, it hurt and when he did try to speak nothing came out. Jemma pulled back slightly to study him and frowned slightly.    
“Fitz…open your mouth,” she told him softly and when he did her eyes widened in horror. The guards had literally stopped him from talking. Whatever they did to him up there, one of the things that they had done was cutting out his tongue. That explained the blood.

“Oh Fitz,” Jemma reached through the bars and took both of his hands squeezing them gently. “You don’t have to be able to talk to get out of here with me. I have a plan for us both,” she gave a small smile in his direction which he returned. “And I’m sorry for what happened. I don’t want to think of what they might do to either of us next.”   


 


	4. Hello

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter where everything comes to an end. Whether it's a happy ending or a sad ending you'll have to decide for yourself. Again there are trigger warnings for blood, needles and violence.

The pair both stood when they heard an alarm blaring and the guards came down the hall, unlocking all of the cells and marching the patients straight to the dining hall. Jemma slowed a little so that she could walk next to Fitz, holding his hand within her’s and looking at him with a small smile. She didn’t mind that he could no longer speak. She wanted to stay with him regardless and make sure that they didn’t hurt him again. 

 

When they reached the dining hall and before the food was served to them, one of the guards stood at the front of the room with a megaphone listing off the people that were being taken into intensive care that day. The list was shorter than usual and Jemma didn’t pay much attention to it. Until she heard Fitz’ name being called out. Her head lifted in fear and she looked over at the guard and then to Fitz who was being hoisted out of his chair and steered towards the doors. 

“No! Fitz! You can’t take him,” she shouted out and stood, only to be pushed down by a guard again. “Let go of me!” She shrugged the hands off of her but, stayed where she was and looked over at Fitz a sad look in her eyes. “I’ll find you! I’ll find you Fitz I promise!” 

The last thing that she saw was him being taken through the doors and a plate of food being put in front of her on the table. When she wouldn’t eat anything, a guard came over and practically force fed her the grimy and lumpy gruel that all of the patients were eating. Her mind was still racing and she knew that she had to find a way to get into the back room. She knew that she had to find Fitz and save him. She couldn’t let them hurt him anymore. She couldn’t let him suffer through any torture that they had planned.

 

That day was the first day in a long time that Jemma was allowed in the entertainment room. She sat in one of the chairs and kept her eyes trained on the guards that were standing by one of the doors to intensive care. She had to find a way to get in there. She still had the keycard. She just needed a distraction. Her eyes moved over to one of the other patients. Will Daniels. Rumour had it that he suffered from multi-personality disorder. Jemma made his way over to him and sat by him. 

“Will. Hey, it’s Jemma,” she spoke softly and he looked over to her, his eyes distant and unknowing to who she was.

“What do you want?” he asked her, eyebrows furrowing together. “You’re troublesome. I know what other people say about you.”

“I need your help. You see the guards over there,” she nodded towards the two beside the door. “I need them to move away from the door. Think you can help me?”

“What’s in it for me?” 

“A chance to get out of here hopefully,” she told him. 

“Fine,” he sighed and stood up making his way over towards another one of the patients, Grant Ward she believed that he was called. She wasn’t sure why Grant was in there but, it even shocked her when she witnessed Will start to hit and beat up Grant on the spot. The guards noticed the commotion and both went over to try and stop the men, which Jemma took as her chance to get over to the door, take out the keycard and slip in through the doors. Now she just had to navigate and try to find Fitz. 

 

She started walking and followed the direction of a beeping sound. She wasn’t going to give up. She had to find Fitz. Stopping outside of one of the rooms she looked inside to see a long line of beds and bodies, and doctors all gathered around. Her eyes narrowed and she looked around her for some sort of alarm. She needed to get the doctors out of there. She needed to find a way to set an alarm off. Her eyes searched the corridor until she found a fire alarm switch. All of this just for one guy? Jemma narrowed her eyes slightly, surprised at herself. She had never cared for anyone in this way before. Never thought to actually befriend anyone before, but Fitz was different. She had to save him. She just had to. Building up the courage, she wandered over to the fire alarm and broke the glass with a simple punch. Yes, maybe the glass hurt and caused her knuckles to bleed but, she managed to get the alarm blaring and all of the doctors filed out of the room. 

 

The young girl ran into the room of bodies and let her eyes dart frantically around. She couldn’t call out for him, he wouldn’t be able to answer. As she walked down the long hall, and passed each body, she noticed how they were all wired up, some with face masks, others with nose tubes. She stopped when she found Fitz, eyes closed and a wire tubing in his wrist which honestly broke her heart. She sat by his bed and took his hand in hers, watching as he slowly blinked his eyes open. 

“Fitz,” she gasped and tried to hold back a sob as he tried to smile at her and squeezed her hand in return. “Oh God I’m so sorry. I didn’t want this to happen to you,” she sighed and bit her lip. “I’m going to get you out of this though,” she moved to the wire tubing in his wrist but, she stopped when he grabbed her hand and just shook his head. 

“Fitz, you need to get out of here,” she begged, eyes narrowing in confusion and then it hit her. She couldn’t get him out of there. He had so many drugs in his system that if she got him out of there then he would die, and that was the last thing that she wanted. 

“Oh God…”

“You! What are you doing in here!” a voice barked from the other side of the room, causing Jemma to stiffen slightly. 

“I was here to take back the people that you’re torturing!” Jemma yelled back at him, eyes burning with tears.

“You’ve made a mistake coming in here today. If we let you go, you’ll talk. We can’t let that happen,” he told her, striding towards her and grabbing her by the wrists as she struggled in his grip. 

“Let me go! Get off of me!” she yelled and thrashed against the man, her other fist hitting the man’s chest. 

“Calm down girly. Just relax,” he moved his other hand over her mouth to stop her from shouting and distressing the patients but, Jemma had other ideas and bit down on the man’s hand. 

“Enough!” the man growled, his now bitten hand rising and slapping Jemma clean across the face, causing her to look away with tears in her eyes. 

“You’re a monster,” she whispered. “You’re evil…” 

“And nobody is ever going to find out,” he grabbed her again and grabbed a needle from the side, about to sedate her when he felt the needle snatched out of his hand and injected into his own arm, the last thing him seeing was the cold blue eyes that belonged to a now mobile Fitz. A Fitz that had ripped the wire tubing from his own wrist, blood now dripping onto the floor where the guard now lay limp. 

 

Jemma’s eyes moved over to Fitz and she fell to the floor on her knees with Fitz, his hands moving to cup her tear stained cheeks as she kept her eyes on him. 

“Fitz… no. You can’t do this! Please,” she shook her head and wrapped her arms around him, sobbing onto his shoulder. “I can’t lose you! I just met you and- I don’t want to have to say goodbye to you,” she sniffled and felt her face lifted by the Scotsman who leaned forward and kissed her gently, with her melting into the kiss before going limp in her arms.

“Fitz… I’m sorry,” she whispered letting him lie down as she lay down with him and rested her head on his chest, closing her eyes and staying there until she fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading guys, I'll be posting more chapters for 'Safe' and then I have another idea for a fanfiction in mind. One that is more happier this time.


End file.
